


Don’t Say Your Heart’s In A Hurry

by Haicrescendo



Series: Carry On For You [6]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: #responsibleadults2020, Alternate Universe, Gen, Piandao is the real mvp, but at least it’s not dead in a ditch or anything, hand waving canon because fuck it, here’s that reunion you all wanted so bad, hey y’all remember how piandao kidnapped a child that one time, it’s not great but he’s trying okay?, oops it’s definitely child abuse, this is not how uncle thought he’d find his kid, tiny Zuko is doing his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22723864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haicrescendo/pseuds/Haicrescendo
Summary: [Piandao rarely feels anger with this kind of intensity and the cold waves rocking through him are startling to the point that all he can do is mumble his address, throat tight, and hang up. He’s numb with fury as he heads straight to the house and barely manages to not slam the door open.It startles Zuko anyway, perched on the sofa with Druk and Foxglove bundled up on either side of him.“Are you...okay?” He asks after a moment of silence, because all Piandao finds that all he can do is stare at him. “Master Piandao?”“I cannot believe you,” he finally manages to force out, “Two years. Two years here with me, and you let Iroh think you were dead.”]Or,The reunion chapter.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Piandao & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Carry On For You [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1599013
Comments: 168
Kudos: 2474
Collections: The Piandao Library, zuko best boi





	Don’t Say Your Heart’s In A Hurry

**Author's Note:**

> HERE’S THAT REUNION YOU GUYS WANTED SO BAD. As always, if you enjoyed this, please leave a comment and let me know! It’s hard putting things out into the void.

* * *

  
Iroh is _losing his shit._

Piandao rarely feels anger with this kind of intensity, and the cold waves rocking through him are startling to the point that all he can do is mumble his address, throat tight, and hang up. He’s numb with fury as he heads straight to the house and barely manages to not slam the door open.

It startles Zuko anyway, perched on the sofa with Druk and Foxglove bundled up on either side of him.

“Are you...okay?” He asks after a moment of silence, because all Piandao finds that all he can do is stare at him. “Master Piandao?”

“I cannot _believe_ you,” he finally manages to force out, “Two years. _Two years_ here with me, and you let Iroh think you were dead.”

Zuko’s already pale face drains of all its color and he goes very, very still.

“...What?”

“ _I said,_ ” Piandao repeats, trying his very hardest to be as steady as he can and failing, failing, failing miserably, “Two years, and you let Iroh think you were dead. When the hell were you going to say something? When you were eighteen? When you got married? When Ozai finally kicked the bucket? Never?”

Zuko’s mouth opens but he says nothing. He closes it, swallows hard, then tries again. 

Nothing.

His answer is clear in his silence.

“Did you know, he was still looking for you? The man’s in Kanto right now. He searched the whole region and finally had to try another one. He left Vulca the night you did, apparently, and hasn’t gone back.” Piandao’s hearing his voice come out but he doesn’t recognize it. It’s like it belongs to somebody else. “I sent him the video, on a whim, because surely he would think it was funny. Anyone would, right? It was funny. Cute.”

Dead silence.

“He called me. _Hysterical._ Because he had no idea that you were still alive, and hadn’t even dreamed to hope that you could be safe, and here I am sending him a video of his _dead nephew._ How could you _do that?_ I told you to tell him and you lied to my face!” 

When had he started shouting? When had all his determined steadiness risen to a roar?

Piandao realizes, very suddenly and abruptly that he probably should have waited a few minutes to compose himself before doing this, because once the tide of indignant fury washes out of him and he really looks at Zuko, he realizes that he’s made a mistake. 

The boy is milk pale and washed out, and has plastered himself to the back of the couch at some point during Piandao’s tirade. He looks like he doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare _breathe,_ lest he sets him off, but a minute tremble buzzes through his frame. The tiniest movement, something that Piandao hasn’t seen since the boy was ten.

Druk rumbles from low in his throat. He mirrors his trainer in position but not posture, both threat and willingness to take care of threats on full display in his body language. Foxglove’s ears are pinned flat back against her skull and while she isn’t showing teeth, she takes her cues well from Druk and from Zuko’s palpable distress.

Piandao shifts seamlessly from demanding an explanation to damage control.

“Zuko,” he says softly, forcing all the tension in his body loose and making himself relax, “I am not going to hurt you. I’ve never hurt you and I’m not starting now. Can you hear me?”

Zuko nods, slowly, like he’s underwater. His eyes are _huge,_ round and glassy gold.

“I need you to breathe, deeply, please, hold, and out. Again—deep breath, hold it, and out.”

Slowly, slowly, Zuko begins breathing again, and he stops looking so much like he’s going to pass out. That doesn’t take care of the blatant fear and trepidation displayed as obviously on his face as if they were written there in words. Piandao doesn’t make a habit of yelling much, and even if he did, it doesn’t change the fact that Zuko doesn’t know how to be reprimanded by someone who won’t hurt him. 

He should know this by now.

Piandao approaches with his hands up and kneels down by the sofa in front of Zuko’s knees.

“I’m sorry for shouting. I shouldn’t have done that. Even if I was angry, it’s never my intention to scare you, and I should have known better. No matter how mad I get, I never want you to be afraid of me, and I will _never_ put a hand on you in anger. Can I touch you?”

Zuko continues to watch him warily but eventually nods. Piandao reaches out and takes his hands and squeezes, firmly but not hard. Under the pressure, Zuko’s shivering finally calms.

“I’d like to know why you didn’t want to talk to your uncle. I know you, so I know you had to have a reason. Can you tell me?”

“I didn’t…” Even though he hasn’t raised his voice or said much at all, Zuko sounds raspy and hoarse, even at a whisper. “I didn’t want to tell him because I didn’t...I didn’t know if he would—he never did anything, but he never _did_ anything. I didn’t know. I was scared, I didn’t _know,_ okay?”

Piandao feels like he’s been punched in the gut.

He’s been friends with Iroh for years—more like decades, honestly. The idea that this child could be so afraid of him, the idea that he could think, for even a second, that Iroh could condone his father’s behavior, makes Piandao feel sick to his stomach.

“What is it that he didn’t do?” Piandao asks gently.

Zuko clenches his fingers hard around Piandao’s hands and stares down at his lap. Piandao can’t tell if he’s afraid or ashamed.

“He didn’t _help,_ ” he says, so softly that he can barely be heard. “I know that he was sad about Cousin Lu Ten, we all were—I mean, _I_ was. I guess I was the only other one who was. I know I—I’m not his kid. Just his nephew, you know? But I needed help, and he didn’t—I didn’t—” Zuko’s golden eyes are shiny and wet and if he cries, Piandao doesn’t know what he’s going to do. “He didn’t help me. Maybe he didn’t know. He probably didn’t know, but he didn’t _help_.”

The tears welling up in the kid’s eyes overflow and Piandao leans in before he can think about it, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and reeling him in. They’re not really hugging types—Zuko saves his physical affection for his pokémon and Piandao tends to care with his hands off, but the kid needs it, and Piandao couldn’t ignore him if he tried. 

Zuko goes rigid and tense for a moment and then goes boneless in Piandao’s hold, sagging against him and sniffling a little into his shoulder. He doesn’t hug back but one of his hands buries itself in the fabric of the man’s shirt.

“I can’t claim to know what Iroh was thinking, or even if he was thinking at all,” Piandao tells him, “But one thing I know for certain is that the man loves you and wants you safe. If he knew? No force on this planet would have stopped him from pulling you out of it, no matter what he had to do. It’s okay if you don’t believe it. Believing it doesn’t make it any more or less true.”

“...Is he coming here?” Zuko’s voice, still small and soft, is even more so when being muffled in Piandao’s shoulder.

“I’m sure that he is.” Piandao gives him a squeeze around the shoulders and releases him when he squirms a little. “I may have hung up on him.”

Zuko frowns and looks away, focusing on a spot on the back wall. 

“I’m scared. What if he…?” Zuko can’t finish his question.

He doesn’t have to.

“He won’t.”

“But what if—“

“ _He won’t_ ,” Piandao tells him firmly. “And if he does, by some horrible chance that I’ve misjudged him greatly over the span of almost forty years? I will be the first to show him the door. I promised you that I would keep you safe, and I will. Can you trust me to do that?”

Zuko looks him in the eyes, measures him up against the past two years.

He nods just once.

“Yeah,” he breathes, “I trust you. If...if it’s bad. Will you make him go away?”

“If it’s bad, I’ll make him go away,” Piandao repeats dutifully, and means it.

* * *

Piandao calls Iroh back.

He doesn’t have any intention of telling him Zuko’s business (that’s the kid’s job to disclose, if he wants to or feels he has to, and not Piandao’s decision to make) but he definitely feels like hanging up on him wasn’t a great reaction.

By the time he calls back, Iroh has already booked a flight to Hoenn for two days from now and sent him his itinerary.

“And will...will Zuko be coming with you to pick me up?” The man asks at the end of the conversation. Tentative. Like he’s not sure of his welcome or where he stands.

Piandao sighs a little.

“I’m going to leave that up to him. He’s...kind of in a weird place right now. I won’t push him too hard about it.” Thinking of the kid as fragile is a weird feeling.

Iroh is quiet for a long while and then, eventually, agrees.

Piandao hangs up, politely this time. He sits down and rubs his temples. Zuko’s been upstairs, completely silent, for the last six hours. He hasn’t come down and he hasn’t made a sound.

It is going to be a _long_ two days.

* * *

Zuko declines the invitation to go get Uncle Iroh at the airport. It’s a long drive and he’s anxious enough, and the idea of being stuck in a car for however many hours while his stomach eats itself makes him want to forget the whole thing.

He wishes that he could forget the whole thing.

Piandao leaves in the morning, eyes Zuko sitting statue still and already filled with anxiety on the couch, and ruffles his hair.

“Last chance to come?” He offers. 

Zuko shakes his head. He’s not really good at words right now.

“Alright. Try to keep busy. I left you a list of chores and errands you can do if you need it. And keep your phone on you; I’ll keep you updated.”

Zuko nods and Piandao leaves.

He is going to need that list.

* * *

Zuko is up in his room when he hears the car pull down the gravel driveway.

He hears the car doors shut—twice. He hears the front door of the house close—once. He knows he should go downstairs and greet them and get this over with, but Zuko can’t seem to make himself move.

He’s curled up on his bed when there’s a quiet knock at his door.

“It’s just me,” Piandao’s voice filters through, deep and reassuring. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah,” Zuko mumbles, face pressed hard into his arms.

The door opens and, blessedly, shuts. The mattress dips and Zuko feels a hand rub gently over his hair.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“Something that's not clearly a blatant lie, please.”

“I think I’m getting sick. My stomach hurts and I’m cold.”

“If you’re still feeling sick after today, we’ll take care of it,” Piandao says. “Come on. The longer you sit and stew, the worse you’re going to feel.”

Reluctantly, Zuko peels himself off of his bed.

“...if it’s bad, you’ll make him go away?”

“If it’s bad, Zuko, I’ll drive him back to the airport _today.”_

Zuko follows Piandao down the hall and down the stairs. It’s babyish, but what he really wants to do is bury his hands in the back of the man’s shirt and hold on to him until he feels more steady. He settles for hovering behind him instead.

He’s not hiding or anything. He’s _not._

When Piandao stops in the living room, Zuko nearly slams into his back and stops himself at the last minute.

“Come on, Zuko. It’s going to be _fine._ Say hello to your Uncle Iroh,” Piandao rumbles at him and then steps aside completely, leaving Zuko exposed and in the open without a barrier. He freezes.

Uncle is sitting on the couch, looking pretty much exactly the same as Zuko remembers. A few more lines, a bit more worn, but the same kind face. When he catches sight of Zuko, he goes absolutely still.

His mouth opens but no words come out.

Zuko still feels cold. Despite that, he manages to lift a hand and wave.

“...Hi, Uncle.”

Uncle’s eyes, so similar in color to Zuko’s own, go big and shiny, and _oh god_ , he absolutely cannot start crying. If he starts crying, Zuko doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

“ _O-oh,_ ” Small and shaky, is all that manages to tear itself from Iroh’s mouth. “Oh, _Zuko._ Oh, Zuko. I’m so...I’m so glad to see you safe.”

Zuko’s throat feels tight and he knows that if he tries to talk, nothing will come out right. If he opens his mouth right now, he doesn’t know what will come out. Maybe just screaming.

So he nods, a tiny, tense little thing that only barely happens.

Piandao gives his side a nudge with his elbow, and Zuko finally manages to clear his throat.

“How...how was your flight?” 

Uncle blinks back his tears and does not let them go.

“It wasn’t bad,” he answers and sounds a little bit strangled. “Some turbulence.”

“O-okay. Good.”

Zuko can’t do this.

He wanted so badly to just...be normal, be _something_ other than this weird, awkward mess. He’s so afraid that Uncle wants to talk about what happened. He _knows_ that Uncle wants to talk about what happened. And Zuko can’t do that. Not right here and not right now.

He knows he’s going to have to, but he can’t.

He _can’t_.

Piandao makes a surprised noise when Zuko suddenly moves, slipping back behind him and physically pressing himself against his back. With his face buried in the back of Piandao’s shirt, he can’t see the way that Iroh’s face drops or the way that Piandao mouths _easy, take it easy_ to him without making a single sound.

“You know, I’m starving,” Piandao declares into the absolute silence of the living room. “Let’s go do lunch.”

* * *

Go do lunch, in the end, means sending Zuko out to the store with a list, because he looks about to jump out of his skin and having something else to focus on will be good for him.

“Oh god. He hates me.”

It also gives him some time to put his friend back together.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Piandao says firmly, with the patience of someone who has known Iroh for nearly forty years, “He’s scared to death. He’s working through a lot right now.”

Iroh drops his face into his hands.

“I _know_. God. I know. I knew that he probably wasn’t going to run into my arms but I never...I just wasn’t ready to see him afraid of me.”

Piandao sighs.

“He’s not afraid of _you_. He’s afraid of you as a concept.” Piandao reaches out and squeezes his friend’s shoulder. “Show him that you’re here and that you’re real and that you’re different than what his brain’s made up. He loves you and he’s missed you. He just doesn’t know how, right now.”

“You seem to understand him very well.”

“I’ve had time to learn.”

Zuko comes back within the hour, weighed down by grocery bags. He looks startled but not upset when Iroh approaches to take some of them out of his hands, and when Piandao asks him what he’d like to eat, he casts a sideways glance to his uncle, as if gauging an appropriate answer.

“You know, I could really go for curry,” the man says in a way that’s just too casual to be casual, and Zuko’s body loosens.

It’s the right answer.

Zuko peels potatoes and cuts the meat, and Iroh scrubs the carrots, and Piandao is in charge of the spice mix because he’s learned over time and a lot of burnt taste buds that if he lets the kid have his way, it’ll be too spicy for normal human consumption.

This is easier, he decides, and a way better idea than actually trying to go out to eat, and it’s gratifying to see the look of startled pleasure on Zuko’s face when his uncle compliments his knife skills. Zuko always does better with things that make him uncomfortable when he has something to do with his hands and he’s distracted enough by being busy that it doesn’t even bother him when Iroh stands closely enough next to him to brush his shoulders.

Iroh puts down his carrot.

“I need to tell you, because I’m not sure that you know. And I don’t think that I can pretend for a second longer that things are okay if...if I don’t tell you.”

Zuko goes stiff and immediately looks to Piandao for help. Piandao, who turns away and studiously grinds spices with his mortar and pestle to avoid seeing the panicked betrayal on the kid’s face.

He’s on his own with this one.

“I need you to know that I didn’t know. It’s no excuse for not doing _something_ , Zuko. It’s not, and I’m not trying to excuse myself. But if I had known, for even a second, that something like that was happening under my nose, I would have done something. Anything, to get you out of there. I’m so, so sorry.” Iroh is so earnest. So very, very earnest.

Zuko stares intently down at his pile of potatoes and says nothing.

It’s a silence that lasts long enough to be uncomfortable, and when Zuko finally talks, it's in a soft, crackly whisper.

“You were so sad. I...I don’t think that you saw _anything_ , even when it was right in front of you. So I—I believe you when you say that you didn’t know.” He looks up, then, and his eyes are suspiciously bright. “But you should have.”

The smile that plays on Iroh’s lips is a sad one. 

“You’re right,” he answers, “I should have. It’s not something that I can make up for by apologizing to you. But I’m here now, I’ve missed you so, and I’m very, very glad that Piandao was able to help you when I could not.”

Zuko sags, then, against the countertop, and drops his face into his arms. 

Iroh doesn’t try and hold him but he does put a hand on his shoulder, squeezes firmly.

“I understand if you can’t trust me right now, and I understand why you wouldn’t—“ Iroh’s voice breaks just a little despite himself and his own determination to, for what feels like the first time in forever, put Zuko and his feelings first. “—Why you wouldn’t have come to me. I know why you would have felt that you couldn’t.”

Because retrospect is the most painful kind of perspective one can have. It’s taken a long time for him to get here, to a point where he can handle that, just as he can tell it’s taken Zuko a long time to get to where he is now.

“I’ll understand if, after this, you wouldn’t want to see me very much.” Or at all, is what his heart won’t let him say, because Iroh very much does not want that. Just because he’ll understand doesn’t mean that that’s what he wants.

Zuko jerks, and rips his head off the countertop to stare, horrified, at his uncle. 

“I don’t—I don’t want _that_!” He exclaims, scrubbing his hand over his eyes, dry but rimmed with telling red. “I don’t...it’s _hard,_ okay? It’s hard and I don’t know what to do. I was scared to tell you and I didnt—I couldn’t go back. I _couldn’t._ But it wasn’t...it wasn’t nice to not tell you something.” Even now, Zuko doesn’t regret it. He remembers, to this day, the need to just survive that fueled him for so long, and just because he’s found a safe place to land doesn’t mean that he’s forgotten. He doesn’t have to regret his mistakes for them to still be mistakes. “I’m not sorry I did it. But it wasn’t nice and I hurt you, and _I’m sorry.”_

This time Iroh doesn’t stop himself from pulling the boy into a hug. Piandao half expects the kid to struggle but Iroh broadcasts his intentions, and Zuko lets him come, allows himself to be reeled into Iroh’s barrel chest, to be folded into his arms and stay there.

Piandao makes sure that the curry actually gets cooked.

* * *

Dinner goes well, surprisingly.

Zuko only stirs one spoon of sambal into his curry and Iroh manages to keep himself together enough that nobody else goes off the rails.

That is, until Zuko gives Iroh a funny little sideways look and asks out of the blue, “Do you want to know what happened? You can ask. I’ll tell you.”

Piandao chokes on his bite of curry, and Iroh goes still, sets down his spoon.

“If you would like to tell me, I want to know.”

Which, in Piandao’s opinion, is a hilariously understated way of saying _I have been dying for this particular information since two years ago_ _and my best friend of forty years knows all of it and has refused to tell me anything._

“Have you eaten enough?” Piandao asks him. The kid tends to quit eating when he gets stressed out, and a story like that? Guaranteed to put him off his food for the night.

Zuko nods and takes his plate to the sink, then returns to the table.

“What did...what did Father say happened?”

Iroh releases a gusty, irritated breath.

“Only that your Charmander had burned you in an accident,” he says darkly, “I knew it had to be wrong. Even by accident, that pokémon was devoted to you. He’d never put himself in a position to hurt you.”

“Is,” Zuko interrupts.

“Is?”

“Is,” the boy confirms, and presses his thumb to the button on a pokéball at his hip. Druk pops out and scrambles up to perch atop Zuko’s shoulders. He catches sight of Iroh and gives a curious trill. “ _Is_ devoted. You remember Uncle, right? It’s been a long time.”

Iroh _stares_. Then his gaze shifts from the baby dragon’s face to his tail draped casually over Zuko’s shoulder, eyes the unnatural kink in it that never really healed.

All the color slips from his face.

Zuko ignores his internal strife and scritches Druk on the head. He’s acting casual but he won’t look at anyone.

“It was no accident. Father was—he was being himself, and he—he hurt me. A little. Druk tried to protect me, and Father broke his tail, and made him burn me. He got scared and ran away.” With every word that comes out of him, he gets quieter and quieter. “I woke up, found Druk in the forest, and stole a boat. Then Master Piandao found me, and brought me here.”

It’s a neat, tidy little story. Too neat and too tidy, and there’s enough truth in it to keep Piandao quiet but it’s wrapped up too nicely to be complete.

Iroh nearly, nearly asks for more, except that he can see that his nephew’s hands are beginning to tremble even as they twist together and he’s doing a very interesting variety of deep breathing, and knowing that, Iroh just _can’t._ It would be hard for anyone to talk about something like that, much less a twelve year old boy.

Iroh wants those details, to push them into his own skin and bones until they bruise to remind him, for the rest of his life, that this can and will _never_ happen again. But he won’t take them from Zuko, not right now when it’s clear that just the basics are taking their toll on him.

“Can I…” he whispers, “Can I go to bed, now? I don’t feel good.”

It’s barely six o’clock, but Piandao nods anyway.

He’s seeing the same things that Iroh is. Probably more.

“Go on, then. Shower first, then bed. Sleep well.”

“Goodnight, Zuko,” Iroh echoes.

“Night, Master Piandao. Night, Uncle.”

“Holler if you need anything, kid.”

Zuko doesn’t run but any faster and he would have. Iroh and Piandao listen to footsteps going up the stairs, then the sound of running water.

Then, and only then, does Iroh drop his face into the table with a hard thud. Piandao snickers at him.

“I fail to see anything at all funny about this,” Iroh grumbles.

“It’s not _funny_ , it’s just that you look exactly like Zuko when you do that,” the other man tells him, and gets out of his chair to rummage in the cabinet. “It’s got to be here somewhere.”

“What are you looking for?”

“A-ha!” Piandao turns around, a mostly-full bottle of amber liquid in his hand. “I’m not much of a drinker, myself, but I’d say we could both use a nightcap.”

“It’s barely six,” Iroh points out.

“Are you really denying that you need a drink right now? I _know_ I do.” Piandao grabs two glasses and sets them down onto the table with a clink and throws himself back into his chair. Iroh doesn’t answer him and he pours a few fingers of liquor into his glass anyway, then for himself. “Cheers,” he says, not a little bit bitterly, and knocks back about half of his drink. It’s definitely for sipping and not shooting, and he doesn’t care.

Iroh doesn’t shoot his but sips it slowly. It’s good whiskey, and burns just enough going down to be satisfying.

“I’ve really screwed the pooch with him, right?”

“Nah,” Piandao replies, adds a bit more to his glass. “That was all your brother. If Zuko didn’t want to at least try, he wouldn’t have even come into the same room with you. I’ve spent two years keeping that kid out of a hole, don’t you put yourself there now. I’ll make you sleep in the woods.”

“You will not.”

“I’m old and unpredictable. Disrespectful. Who knows what I’ll do?”

“He practically _ran away_ from me.”

“He was always going to.” Booze loosens Piandao’s lips and his manners. “He does the best he can but the kid can’t help being scared out of his mind about half the time. Think of it this way: he was scared to death of what you’d say to him, how you’d react, what you’d do, and he _still_ stuck around long enough to mostly finish a meal with you. That’s pretty good, considering. This was the best case scenario.”

This time, Iroh _does_ shoot his glass, and Piandao refills it for him.

“I’m trying really, really hard to sit here and not take the first flight to Vulca, and go murder my brother,” he says steadily, calmly, as if he’s saying reasonable things and not casually discussing murder.

“ _Please_ don’t do that. First of all, you’re about ten minutes off from intoxication and no one should let you on an aircraft right now. Second—what is most important to you right now? Getting revenge, or sticking around for the kid you _just_ found again?”

Iroh glares at him.

“That’s fighting dirty.”

“Nature of the beast.” Piandao drains his glass but instead of refilling it, he props his chin up in his palms and stares off into space as if deep in thought. “He really did miss you. In retrospect, I should have known. Every time I asked if he’d heard from you, he told me no. Lied right to my face but he always looked sad about it.”

Golden eyes, so very like his nephew’s, are beginning to well up with tears.

“Please do not cry. I’m worthless enough with the kid when he does it. Do not do it.”

No one ever listens to Piandao, though, not the kid he accidentally kidnapped and not his uncle either, because Iroh buries his face in his hands and _sobs._

“You’ve taken such good care of him,” he sniffs, voice thick and blubbery with tears. “Thank you for finding him. Thank you for taking him away, and keeping him safe. I know it wasn’t what you planned.”

“None of us ever got what we planned,” Piandao tells him bluntly. “If we’re lucky, we get what we deserve, in the end.”

Iroh cries and cries, very quietly, until he eventually falls asleep right there at the table. Piandao silently clears away the glasses and puts the bottle back up, pads out to the living room and comes back with a blanket that he drapes over his friend’s shoulders.

* * *

Zuko’s bedroom door is shut when Piandao goes upstairs, and he’s not surprised by that at all. The lights are out but Piandao knows the kid, and knocks on the door anyway.

“It’s me,” he says softly when there’s no answer.

“You can come in,” comes very quietly from inside, and Piandao pushes the door open, shutting it behind him.

He finds Zuko pretty much exactly the way he expected—curled up in a ball and wrapped up underneath his comforter. He doesn’t stir when Piandao approaches, and he doesn’t so much as poke his head out when the man sits down on the edge of his bed.

“Overwhelmed?” He asks.

The area around where Zuko’s head must be shakes back and forth a few times, and Piandao reaches out to smooth down the blanket like someone else might smooth down his hair.

“No,” Zuko finally answers. “Not really. Just...sad.”

“You’re allowed to be sad. Anything else, or just sad?”

“I’m not, like, mad or anything.”

“When you say it like that, it definitely sounds like you’re a little mad.”

Zuko goes very silent underneath the covers.

“Tell me about it.”

“Mad is a bad word,” he says finally. “Not the right word. I shouldn’t be mad, right? He didn’t know, and he told me he was sorry. And I _missed_ him. I really did. And I’m glad that he’s here.”

“I believe you,” Piandao tells him. “But that still doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to be mad, if that’s how it is. Whether he knew or not, you still got hurt. And he didn’t help you when you needed it. Does that make you mad?”

“... A little,” Zuko admits, finally, like it hurts to say it. It probably does. “I want to trust him.”

“That’s very grown up of you.”

“And I think...I think I want to travel a little. By myself, for a while. If that’s okay. Not right now, but like, in a little while.”

Piandao’s hand, running patterns over Zuko’s head over the comforter, goes very still. 

Zuko abruptly backpedals and shoots upright so fast that he nearly throws himself off the bed, comforting pooling around him.

“Is that okay?” He asks once more, looking frantic and a little bit desperate, like he’s definitely going to be heartbroken if Piandao says no. “Can I?”

“Can we talk about it more seriously in the morning? That’s not a no—“ Piandao says before Zuko can open his mouth again, “I promise, it’s not a no. I just thought that it would take a little longer for you to want to. We’ve all had a long day, though, and I don’t think that you should make any hasty decisions right this second. Yes, you can travel, whenever you’re ready, but I can tell that you’re wiped and we’ll talk more about it in the morning.”

The relief on Zuko’s face is visible and visceral, and slowly he allows himself to lay back down on his bed and let Piandao pull the blanket back over him, all the way up to his chin.

It’s just 8 o’clock but he tiredly rubs at his eyes anyway.

“I’m proud of you, kid. You did good today. Now go to sleep.”

As if on cue, Zuko yawns hugely and rolls over into his side, curling up into a ball and just barely managing to peer sleepily up at Piandao. It’s such an openly trusting face, the man realizes with a start, soft and innocent.

“Hey, Master Piandao?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“Thank you for taking care of me. I know you probably didn’t want to, but I’m grateful anyway. I know I’m a lot of trouble.”

“Not half as much trouble as you think you are,” Piandao mumbles to nobody, because Zuko’s somehow managed to fall asleep right there without even hearing him. For a good while, Piandao sits on the edge of the mattress in silence.

Sometimes, the man thinks, all anyone can hope for is to get what they deserve. He hopes that he’s done something good enough to deserve this.

And, not for the first time, Piandao hopes very fervently that Ozai gets what he deserves too.

* * *

  
  



End file.
